Entries tagged with mirage of blaze

I am back in Mirage mode, catching up on my reading thanks to the most welcome and charitable translating of quaint_twilight and 99me. I've just been contemplating MoB's awesomeness at fulfilling the quintessential yaoi/slash project of deconstructing gender roles. To wit, tell me, O MoB fans, which one is the heroine? Before you answer, consider:

Many and grateful thanks to 99me for translating the first 3 chapters of volume 21 of Mirage of Blaze for those of us who get baffled within the first two characters of a Japanese sentence. It is wonderful to sit down and read MoB again, and volume 21 has a lot to offer thus far.

Title: "Patterns of Life"Fandoms: Mirage of Blaze/Mushishi CrossoverRating/Warnings: PG-13 for themes, light swearing; standard MoB dysfunctionality; het (but no explicit yaoi)Characters: Ginko, Naoe, Kagetora, cameos: Tan'yuu, Adashino, YahagiWord Count: about 11,000Disclaimer: Neither is mine.Spoilers: Through the end of MoB; references to various Mushishi episodes Summary: Ginko encounters a 500-year-old woman whom he finds bemusing, confusing, amusing, and occasionally abusing.A/N: Apologies to Mushishi fans for this fic, in which Mirage of Blaze sits upon Mushishi like an 800-pound gorilla upon a little, translucent mushi. I put in Latin abbreviations to signify Mushishi note-taking jargon of the 19th century. Apologies for my random mix of Japanese and English vocab; it's the best more poor Japanese skills can do. Cross-fandom vocab: onryou = vengeful spirit; mushi = buggy spirit.

Title: "Patterns of Life"Fandoms: Mirage of Blaze/Mushishi CrossoverRating/Warnings: PG-13 for themes, light swearing; standard MoB dysfunctionality; het (but no explicit yaoi)Characters: Ginko, Naoe, Kagetora, cameos: Tan'yuu, Adashino, YahagiWord Count: about 11,000Disclaimer: Neither is mine.Spoilers: Through the end of MoB; references to various Mushishi episodes Summary: Ginko encounters a 500-year-old woman whom he finds bemusing, confusing, amusing, and occasionally abusing.A/N: Apologies to Mushishi fans for this fic, in which Mirage of Blaze sits upon Mushishi like an 800-pound gorilla upon a little, translucent mushi. I put in Latin abbreviations to signify Mushishi note-taking jargon of the 19th century. Apologies for my random mix of Japanese and English vocab; it's the best more poor Japanese skills can do. Cross-fandom vocab: onryou = vengeful spirit; mushi = buggy spirit.

Title: "Patterns of Life"Fandoms: Mirage of Blaze/Mushishi CrossoverRating/Warnings: PG-13 for themes, light swearing; standard MoB dysfunctionality; het (but no explicit yaoi)Characters: Ginko, Naoe, Kagetora, cameos: Tan'yuu, Adashino, YahagiWord Count: about 11,000Disclaimer: Neither is mine.Spoilers: Through the end of MoB; references to various Mushishi episodes Summary: Ginko encounters a 500-year-old woman whom he finds bemusing, confusing, amusing, and occasionally abusing.A/N: Apologies to Mushishi fans for this fic, in which Mirage of Blaze sits upon Mushishi like an 800-pound gorilla upon a little, translucent mushi. I put in Latin abbreviations to signify Mushishi note-taking jargon of the 19th century. Apologies for my random mix of Japanese and English vocab; it's the best more poor Japanese skills can do. Cross-fandom vocab: onryou = vengeful spirit; mushi = buggy spirit.

I have been rediscovering Tori Amos lately through Venus Orbiting, which has a fantastic re-visioning of the song, "Waitress." And it came to me that this song is just about the perfect L and B song, that is, B's POV of L.

I am a little brain-addled from movie-making logistics, but that's not going to stop me from trying to articulate some Mirage of Blaze thoughts inspired by the fascinating commentary on Buddhism that has been going on here. We've had lots of discussion of whether MoB is, in fact, anti-Buddhist. I don't think it is; however, it may be antithetical to Buddhism. As skinintheway has observed, Naoe's avowal that he'll remain alive forever to celebrate his love for Takaya almost reads like a parody of a Bhodisattva's vow to remain in the mundane world to ease the suffering of others. The former vow is personal, the latter impersonal. The former is connected to a particular love, the latter to universal compassion. The former rejects enlightenment (rejecting reincarnation and clinging to attachment); the latter is based on having achieved enlightenment. Put simply, Buddhism is based on rejecting attachment; Mirage of Blaze is, perhaps, the ultimate celebration of attachment.

Thank you, Soseki Natsume-sensei for reminding me of what it's like to get lost in a really well-written book--and it feels like it's been a very long time. Kokoro, written in 1914, is a collection of three connected novellas, detailing the lives of a university student and a melancholy older man he assumes as a mentor. The translator's (Edwin McClellan) preface tells us that the dominant theme is loneliness, and I guess I wouldn't disagree. All three stories read as very real, very human, and fascinating depictions of the interplay between traditional Japanese culture and emerging western values in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.